I am a New Zealander. 

I was born here.  My parents were both born here.  My grandparents were all born here.  Seven of my eight great-grandparents were born here too (the other was born in Scotland).

I don’t belong anywhere else.

I hate being called a European. 

I lived in London for three years, and loved it, but I don’t have any connections there.  They have a queue at Heathrow for Europeans, but I wasn’t allowed through that way.

I find it odd that our country still holds onto some traditions from our time as a part of The Empire.  The UK and Europe have changed a lot since then, and they have clearly moved on.  It seems to me that we could too.

One easy thing we should do, which would be a symbolic start to this process, is change our flag.

I say “easy” but of course the devil is in the details.  

There are people who have strong associations to the current flag – such as some former soldiers (although, those who fought against the Germans and Italians in WW2 should note that people from those countries all now enter the UK via the European queue I mentioned above).  

And, even amongst those who support this idea there is disagreement about the design that should be adopted.  

For me this is easy.  The Silver Fern is a symbol which is widely associated with New Zealand and New Zealanders.  It’s the symbol most of us would pick if we were asked to represent our country in a single image – which, after all, is the broad purpose of a flag isn’t it?  

A flag needs to be simple, and instantly recognisable.  A plain Silver Fern on a black background would achieve this brilliantly.

So, I’m pleased to see that the group behind NZ Flag have re-organised.  They have my full support and hopefully yours too.

I think they would have a better chance of success if they proposed a specific new design, rather than just advocating a change.  Their current design, which was created by Cameron Sanders from Cato Partners, is cool but is too stylised.  Unlike other Silver Ferns used by sporting teams and other organisations, the design used on a national flag would not need to be registered as a trade mark, so doesn’t necessarily need any unique design features.

I suggest something like this:

(a design based loosely on the Tourism NZ logo)

What do you think?

If you want to add your voice in support of NZ Flag, sign-up on the website or join the Facebook group.

Thanks.

Photo Credits: Silver Fern, by Heaven’s Gate

This is the second post in a two part series about the tax changes announced in the budget last week. Part one is Tax matters?.

In all of this talk of tax nobody seems to be saying much about what our tax dollars are actually spent on.

David Slack’s post last Thursday reminded me of an idea that Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) put forward a while back for a transparent budget.

When people struggle to keep on top of how much they personally earn and spend, then it’s probably also true to say that they really have no idea how much tax they pay, or (more importantly) what it is spent on.

Imagine if we were each sent a statement at the end of the year which included the total amount of tax we had paid and a breakdown of how this had been allocated to the various things that the government decided should be funded using this money.

Now that so many more of us are beneficiaries, via Working For Families, Kiwisaver, Student Loan Interest Write-Offs etc, then those “credit” payments could be incorporated into the statement too.

I suspect people would think differently about our “free” health and education systems, for example, if they better understood how much of their money was spent on it each year.

How much tax did you pay last year?

And what was it spent on?

Don’t you think you should know?

This is the first post in a two part series about the tax changes announced in the budget last week. Part two is Working for families?

“New Zealanders expect far too much from the tax system. It now seems unfashionable to regard the tax system as simply being the Government’s primary means of collecting revenue to run the country. People expect it to also resolve poverty, reduce income inequalities, compensate for surging food and petrol prices and incentivise savings.”
– John Shewan, Chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers, commenting on this weeks budget.

Who would want to be a Minister of Finance?

Can you wait until the election campaign, and the “my tax cut is bigger than yours!” smack down contest, starts? Or will it be the “my propensity to cut spending is bigger than yours!” content now?

Now the team in the red corner has announced their package, how many more blocks of cheese can you afford? That seems the be the question.

And, how many blocks are you expecting the blue corner to offer?

Have you factored in the cost of petrol?

A litre of 91 unleaded now costs NZ$2.00, which is about US$1.56 at current exchange rates. Let’s hope that the dollar doesn’t drop back to 62c anytime soon (like it did at the peak of the last economic cycle), as even assuming the price of oil stays the same as it is now (which seems unlikely) that would mean we’d be paying closer to $3.00 a litre. Suddenly cars are a luxury item!

There is no point, surely, in having the cash for an extra block of cheese when you can’t afford to drive to the supermarket to pick it up.

Do we pay too much tax? Compared to what?

Does the amount of tax we pay make us all less productive?

I don’t know, but I suspect there is an argument to say that lower tax rates just mean that those who are motivated to be successful either way get to keep more of the money they earn.

Although it does create the right incentives for government to keep their spending under control (just like an over-funded start up business, they don’t seem to struggle to find ways to spend the money they have). More about this tomorrow.

Like John Shewan explains above, I think we’re all expecting too much from “the system”.

Is it up to the government to make us feel rich?

Or is it more about the number on the top line of our pay slips (i.e. the bit we influence)?

Here is a interesting comment about the changes to the business tax system which were introduced earlier this year:

“Businesses need to ask themselves two basic questions. Will a bit of tax relief for export marketing and R&D be worth the bureaucratic trouble to get it? And is your failure to export or do R&D simply a matter of being short of a few dollars? Or is it a fundamental failure of ambition, management skills and strategy?”

– Rod Oram, in Dominion Post (sorry, the link I have no longer works: http://stuff.co.nz/4042265a1865.html)

I think the same questions could be asked of individual tax payers too.

What do you think?

What will you do with your tax cuts?

Will they make you work harder? Or bugger off to Australia?

Does a few dollars a week change your vote in either direction?

Or, are there other things that are more important?